A Review of Legendary Character – Hollow | Kingdom Death: Monster

One of the early observations I made back when the Killenium Butcher released was around the character of Hollow; this empty shell made of Dragon Armor spoke to me and it took a little while for me to understand why I liked her. She was the latest iteration of one of my favourite characters, the Dragon Sacrifice. Fast forward to this release and we have confirmation of that, this Legendary Character release depicts the life of Hollow, starting life as an Aspirant, before moving to become a Sacrifice and then return after that as the hollow suit of armor that gives her, her name. Hollow was one of the most fun and intriguing characters in the excellent Killenium Butcher release because she was an extension of the story for a long standing character and she's also the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz.

I'm really glad my guess turned out to be correct because it highlights great storytelling and consistent character design from APG. Even in such a changed form as Hollow, parts of the Dragon Sacrifice's character still came through.

This release gives us our own version of Hollow, brought forth from the act of her face being carved into the ground of the Plane of Stone Faces and reiterated on time and time again by a combination of The Scribe's words and the Sculptor's actions.

As before, I'm writing about this before I have gotten a hold of the boxed set, instead thanks to timberwolfl sending me the information I needed to proxy the cards and play with it while I'm waiting for it to go on sale. I do miss being able to assemble and consider/analyse the miniatures beforehand as they are so often rich with details and visual storytelling, but being able to cover the game content before it reaches the store, so I can hopefully help other people decide if this content is the right fit for them takes priority. I also wish I could do these without having to use proxies until the official stuff arrives, but I tend to be one of the last people to get new releases.

Hollow is a new iteration on the character system design that came with Glow's boxed set, she is designed as a part of the Gambler's Chest Expansion Character deck though she can be used without that relatively cleanly. Hollow's character card is a legendary tier one, meaning it is intended to be the pinnacle of your character deck and it is mutually exclusive with the other Legendary cards. When you set up your character deck you'll have to choose Hollow over the cards for Glow, Red/Aya, Morgan, Weapon Master and The Fang.

Hollow's character card gives us two abilities, the first of these gives us the Pattern Gear card for the Aspirant Headband and the second offers us a goal, for The Hollow to die while wearing the Sacrificial Headband. This means that not only does she offer a unique piece of gear to craft, but she also offers a quest, one which we can't complete at this point because the Aspirant Headband is not the Sacrificial one.

Crafting Cost: 1x Perfect Bone, 1x Organ, 1x Scrap

This Aspirant Headband is a solid piece of gear, it's a head accessory that gives +1 luck and even connects to the Lucky Charm for a smooth additional +1 luck. When crafted it gives us a second Pattern card and when you deal the a killing blow then it evolves, turning into the Anointed Headband. The only downside to this piece of gear is its Irreplaceable Keyword, but as we'll see that is a balance which adds stakes to the entire Hollow quest.

Crafting Cost: 1x Perfect Organ, 2x Bone, 2x Scrap

The Serpent Fang is a refined version of the original Hollow's Sacrificial Fang, it has the same attack profile (3/7+/6) but it has an additional keyword in finesse and the armor generating ability has been altered to require a puzzle affinity activation and it has also been given Irreplaceable and the Blindside ability.

Blindside: A gear special rule. When you wound the monster from its blind spot with this gear, all of its <R> REFLEX become <R> FAILURE until the attack ends. (This includes the current reaction.)

This changes the role of the Serpent Fang, the original Sacrificial version is employed by Hollow so she can operate as the vignette's primary tank (Brave is the secondary tank/bruiser, Red is the primary DPS/Carry and Forgot takes the role of the support). We are still able to gain armor points, but we have to attack from the blind spot now which means we're less able to run the role of tank due to the lower chance of being attacked when in the blind spot. This makes it a solid weapon for damage dealers, especially given that Blindside works well with Dagger Mastery.

It's worth noting that unlike the Headbands, which should be worn by The Hollow, the Serpent Fang is fine to be in the hands of anyone you like. It's not part of the quest line, so you may instead decide to utilise a Deadly weapon for The Hollow to synergise with their additional luck.

The Anointed Headband improves upon its predecessor by gaining +1 armor points for the head, and +1 accuracy in addition to the previous +1 luck. We also gain another pattern gear card unlock with the Serpent Cuirass Pattern. We can also see that if we want to complete the Hollow quest then the Anointed Headband should be worn by The Hollow because when it turns into the Anointed Headband it becomes cursed and the survivor wearing it cannot remove it without tricks like Crystal Skin.

Crafting Cost: 1x Iron, 4x Leather, 1x Broken Lantern, 2x Organ

The Serpent Cuirass is an interesting gear card in many ways, it does not have a set outside of Clothed & Satiated, but what it offers in exchange for that is a lantern keyword body armor gear card that inflicts one automatic wound per attack as long as we hit from the blind spot. This is really good when combined with Devastating X, 1 Speed/Slow weapons as we now have a reliable, safe way to deal wounds without being concerned about reactions/trap. In addition, it also works well with higher speed weapons because while the additional hits above the first work as normal that's something Blindside on the Serpent Blade can help mitigate a bit.

The -2 Evasion and the ability being disabled once an injury level box is filled in are clear downsides, but they are both ones that you can play around if the Serpent Cuirass is used by a damage dealer who is hit less often and combined with the Serpent Fang you can even reduce the speed at which the injury boxes are reached by its armor point generation.

Once again, if we deal a killing blow this Headband will evolve to its third stage like many other Pokemon do and it is here that we finally get the Sacrificial Headband that The Hollow character card requires.

Our final form for the Headband gives an additional +1 Luck, pushing the gear card to a rare and desirable +2 Luck. It also marks you for death, meaning that any population loss (that is the generic lose X population results) will kill The Hollow. Which is something that we want because that's the goal of this quest and when it happens the survivor loses the Sacrificial Headband (they have died and it's cursed so it is archived) and The Hollow is brought back to life with the Stoic Mask.

This is the item that brings the last piece into place with the Empty Vessel survivor status card. This is the main pay-off for our entire journey and it's the card I most wanted to see printed into the normal game from the Killenium Butcher vignette.

This is a very powerful ability, not being able to gain bleeding tokens and transforming severe injuries into -5 armor points, thereby meaning the only way you can die in showdowns is through full loss of armor points or instant death mechanics that bypass severe injuries. One of the key synergies here is anything that heals or generates armor points even if it as just on one hit location because as long as you have armor points at one location you are fine. One of the interesting ways this works out is if, for example you have 10 armor points in the head and nothing anywhere else, each hit you suffer deals just 1 armor point maximum. It's very interesting to play around with ways to concentrate as many hit points as possible into one location so we can reduce the drain rate and that's something I'm looking forward to experimenting with each time new “healing” options turn up.

One other brief thing to note is that the original Aspirant Headband is a pattern card, so once it is archived when it “evolves” if we have a second Hollow in the settlement we can start their journey off as well. We want to get them to the second level (Anointed Headband) and then we can sandbag the final evolve ability by not dealing the final blow. This allows us to have a back up Hollow ready within 1 or 2 lantern years in case something happens to the first one.

This entire quest line of unlocks is something that I found can be put together in a 2 to 3 year window if you focus on it, you only need two finishing blows to level up completely (I'm not sure what the game rules feel about a finishing blow on an encounter monster, they don't seem to be excluded because we have no strict definition of what a finishing blow is in the Living Glossary (at time of writing). So it's possible that Encounters provide a route to get this all done in one year because for unlocking the Empty Shell card we only need to craft the Headband, we can come back and do the Serpent gear later if we desire.

Final Thoughts

Hollow is another excellent addition to the Legendary Character series, with the main drawback being she's competing for a single slot in the Character deck that already has some serious competition. When compared to Glow, Hollow's quest is better rounded out and repeatable but The Red Survivor from Legendary Lantern Armor Aya remains the best Character card and should be the first purchase for people who want to improve their Legendary card pool. Hollow's in second place now for myself because this is a great character with a fun, engaging quest that feels a bit like chasing after Weapon Mastery except it takes a lot less time to achieve and you can set a back up Hollow fairly easily. Once you completed Glow's quest any additional Glows were of zero value, that's not the case here.

So, I do always recommend getting some Legendary characters if you already have, or are planning to get the Gambler's Chest because the there are just two Legendary Character cards in that box and The Fang isn't particularly powerful or interesting.

As for which, currently my recommendation in respect to what legendary characters to pick up are Lantern Armor Aya, Hollow and Glow. However, which one you pick up first is a little less clear, Lantern Armor Aya has the single best legendary character card, but Hollow offers a lot more content and miniatures due to Lantern Armor Aya having that painters scale miniature pushing the cost of the box up a lot while not adding value to non-painters/collectors. So If you want just one Legendary Character I think Hollow is the priority purchase, if you want the single best card for flexibility, combos and synergy then Aya has endless ways you can use the card and it's great in multiples.

Recommended.